A. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to a stand-alone flat bed scanner or hand-held scanner and which incorporates a contact image sensor (CIS) module.
B. Description of the Prior Art
CIS modules and monorail carriages are known; however their use heretofore has been limited to flat bed scanners of the photocopier or facsimile type, as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,957,689 and 5,610,731. Additionally, specific carriage arrangements for CIS modules are known, such as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,528,410; 5,579,128 for scanners which are unidentified in those documents but which are believed to be directed to scanners in which the document rather than the sensor module is moved, i.e., scanners of the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,489,995.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,812 describes a hand-held scanner with a rod, or "Selfoc" lens and CCD array and U.S. Pat. No. 5,258,858 describes a linear sensor array in a variety of scanner types. Contact-image sensors per se, are known, such as described in the U.S. Pat. No. 4,939,591.